today in r t we live in a high tech world of e-mail smartphones and chatting but do you know how much the u.s. government is tracking your every move party has a privacy check for you straight ahead. and the wall street journal one of america's leading newspapers is under fire the paper has been running off ads from mitt romney's advisers without disclosing its ties we'll speak with media matters the group reporting on this case about subjective journalism. plus it's the place

we turn to in a crisis in the hospital but according to a prominent surgeon up to thirty percent of health care the seri and one in four hospital patients are harmed by mistake will look into the issue in just a moment. it's friday september twenty eighth four pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you're watching r t. alright well we want to begin today with an update on your privacy we want to take a closer look at the ways the government is stripping away your digital rights and also ways that you are making it easier for them as well as hackers to access your information and here to help me do that is our cyber guru r t where producer and like hi and you're also we have a lot of ground to cover here but let's start off by talking about the cloud a relatively no low number of people actually knew. you know what the digital cloud

does but ninety five percent of us actually use it in our daily lives i tunes and netflix in banking account most the data that we access to today on the internet isn't actually on our own computers anymore even or in the homes we're actually keeping practically everything in like you said including you know what we listen to what are bank account numbers somewhere in the cloud as it were and who can monitor that well that's really up to whoever maintains those servers but yeah most information we have isn't actually in our possession anymore just kind of out there in the open third parties manage it and in the current legislation that's being proposed in congress and the one that bombing ministrations trying to push out an executive order a lot of that information could easily be intercepted in a matter of a couple of months really depending on how this legislation moves through washington and what we're saying what we're talking about right now is the cloud specifically the amount of data stored so right now what we go off of is the one nine hundred eighty six electronic privacy act and that is what they legislate with

saying that if our information is in a storage unit for over one hundred eighty days that they can access it was relatively few complications and they don't necessarily need a warrant the problem is that that nine hundred eighty six legislation that wasn't accounting for what we're in what we have to date they know like and violent or everything he didn't do and there is only one definition of a cloud going back to ninety six actually you tell me they were going to talk about the e.c.p.a. and i for some reason had these linger in my desk remember these oh i don't think. of one thousand nine hundred five so we're using a legislation that goes back almost a decade before this and that's what we're using to safeguard our privacy is right now and you would think that under an administration that ever ties is being you know the most transparent and the most open that people would be secure in the communications today but if you watch our t.v. we know that you know myself and other guests will regularly come on in explain that that's really not the case unfortunately as of late and just this week the american civil liberties union released the. information that they got through

a freedom of information act request which kind of proves that by the way yes the white house is conducting more warrantless. surveillance and ever before and why it's not just a minute let's go back to the one nine hundred eighty six cans i just want to put it in perspective for viewers to be able to see what's happening in one thousand nine hundred six i think we have a graphic this is apple computer from one thousand nine hundred six it's the apple two g.s. complete with floppy disk drives and we entered this was a time when the challenger exploded when we were talking about weight floppy disks were available in fairly certain they have one of those in the the sony and museum of american history now and yet we're so we're using that type of legislation that was made for those computers to dictate what we are doing on computers like your map that you have sitting over there well i mean it's no surprise there is no argument here that people are trying to move different sort of legislation in congress right now that would protect at least do something to our digital rights

and how we use the internet and you know i would go ahead and say that you know my argument personally is that i think there are some restrictions that a certain necessarily restrictions but there should be laws implemented to keep things up to snuff as it will only talk about surveillance so that's a whole other a whole other can of worms and unfortunately we're you know we're using these these antiquated legislations in order to decide what is just out in the open for the government and we're seeing that it's kind of scary now so what these things are we basically opening up the door to our lives to the government because of these old legislations yeah absolutely precisely yes if we talk about are you ready to talk about the reading of the talk about this i am so eager so you know let's go back a couple of days a.c.l.u. they've filed a request back earlier this year and you know we were going over the documents they finally got yesterday and i'm sorry really this week and what it shows is that under president obama the white. how as has authorized more of these particular

kind of surveillance court orders to monitor americans communications more in the last two years than in the entire decade before that there's a couple different things that they use one is called a trap and trace surveillance the other one is called a pen register and what these do is whether it's your phone conversations or your internet activity the government can go ahead and they can have a judge sign off saying collect that information but because they don't collect all of the information it's much easier to get these to set in stone in effect last year it's like thirty seven thousand of these happened which is three hundred a day or so i'm not sure i'm a mathematician but roughly on there are three hundred times a day a judge says sure thing police you can go ahead and access this information using a pen register or a trap into a surveillance device and what that does is a lets authorities go in and they can see who you're calling and who's calling you how long your phone calls last where they're rationing from where they're going to

but then also when we look at the whole internet side of it these devices also let the government or you know police and law enforcement they can monitor who you're e-mailing who's sending the e-mail how big the e-mail is what the subject line of the e-mail is so even if i really heavily encrypt something and i send you a message and it goes from andrew blake to make a lopez and the subject line says hey meghan this is really important don't let anyone know that the government will still see that subject line hey magazine really in part because those are two things that you can encrypt you know you're saying it so you or your subject not only do you not encrypt it but the whole point of these predators in trap and trace surveillance technologies is that the government can get away with doing so many of these we said thirty seven thousand a year in two thousand and eleven because there are no contents or no content to surveil and so the government isn't actually want to see the body of your email that biddy do you wish but so they don't want to see what's actually happening in the e-mail they just want to see that matter information what's in the header you know who's doing what with whom and can actually see what that content is. but

that's often enough just to you know go ahead and pursue a court case and all they need to say to a judge is this information may help us with a criminal investigation that you sign off and bam you got it just like that just like well let's i want to also bring up the point that it does the e-mails that we send although it might seem like a nine information it could potentially reveal a lot is what you're arguing about a person so we actually have a full graphic of craigslist i mean craigslist alone can be an indicator it can say what your sexual preferences i mean there were just looking at the front screen of craigslist this is a more into the personal section you know and other things we couldn't show you they're a little bit too raunchy for our t. but it really shows you know if you click on that it can they can see what you're clicking on and not necessarily long as they have one of these court orders been requesting hundreds a day tens of thousands of years or tens of thousands per year but they're going up

actually between two thousand and two thousand and eleven ministration has increased internet wiretaps by three hundred sixty one percent and if the you go and look at the phone wiretaps sixty percent right there where you realize more people are communicating via e-mail obviously well let's quickly look at those charts that you're bringing up if we could bring up the graphics that we have so the first one they are talking about is this one right here this is a chart that reveals the number of people whose telephones and the pen register and trap and trace surveillance that actually tripled during the obama administration it also went in the past two years was more than the entire previous decade and if we go ahead switch that other one really quick the second chart shows the number of pen register and trap and trace orders that went up like you said three hundred sixty one percent between two thousand and nine and two thousand and eleven so this is an invasion of privacy is it not i would say so but if you can have a. some sort of federal judge say oh you need this information for some sort of

criminal investigation absolutely you know after the police collect this information they see who you're talking to and how long you're talking to them from and where you're sending the e-mails from geographically they can take that information do whatever they want and they never have to go back to the court and say this is what we did with it it's just always going to be there and it's just me it's not that good all right and you're blake i'm sure you're going to be watching this diligently and reporting about it on our website as do much of our t. dot com slash usa web producer and you're blakeney by you know much to my pleasure all right well still ahead on our team the wall street journal is under fire the paper is running off ads from mitt romney's advisers without disclosing the times will dive into that topic and just a moment. here

is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a dollar. i'm sort of the guy who cares an awful lot about what you say. you know what kind of money they're terrorists. want to see the future is on the on the ball and the credit. can really go to the. you know the corporate media distracts us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industries that sells a sensationalistic garbage because that breaking news i'm having martin and we're.

a break that. a client of american power continues. things in our country so bad it might actually be time for a revolution. and it turns out that

a popular drink at starbucks has a surprising came very near zero. well here in america despite the possible invasion of privacy from the government americans still do enjoy freedom of speech it's something the opinion pages of newspapers make abundantly clear to this day with their pointed pieces but before you let their minced words sway your political opinions the context of the articles author is also important the wall street journal is arguably one of the most respected newspapers in the us one with a well known conservative stance but it turns out ten of its op ed writers the ones who railed against president obama relentlessly during his tenure were actually mitt romney's advisers an interesting fact that the newspaper failed to disclose so is this another example of subjective journalism or are the opinion pages fair game

for more i'm joined by jeremy holden director at research director of research at media matters all right so let's start off germany i just want to start by naming some names of this wall street journal saga we have john bolton max boot we ate casey paula dobriansky mala mary glenn glenn hubbard paul petersen david rivkin and martin west all these people are romney campaign advisers and all they're also op ed writers like i mentioned but like i said that the wall street journal tends to be conservative so what the pages the problem becomes one of disclosure of giving the reader the relevant context to choose for themselves how they need to take this analysis with i think with somebody like john bolton you know people can look at it and say well it's pretty clear where john bolton is coming from.

stake in the outcome of this election long we've seen fox news so it really isn't a secret knowing in his case anyway that he does lean to the right but some of these other people i mean unless you're really paying attention to the article names you're not going to know why this person has an opinion and it's not going to be put in context and that's what they're saying is important right yeah that these people are advising that romney so they're giving you advice there on the journal's editorial pages or you know writing columns critical of the obama administration touting something that mitt romney is trying to do it's important that the rear know that this person has a vested interest that this person your readers don't know who max boot is and if the wall street journal tries to say that this is just some former under secretary he used of service in the government that doesn't mean anything in the context of

the selection this person is a romney adviser and that's what the wall street journal is not telling history and they have gone well beyond the election season and beyond just criticizing president obama they've actually gone to praise mitt romney so they're using their opinion pieces in order to be able to bolster up another person maybe what you're saying is that they could just use a little disclosure line saying hey by the way i work for mitt romney and let me ask you this is this free advertising free political advertising for the romney campaign we know we've talked to some editors from across the country current and former editor of the major newspapers and you know they they all said that this is like kind of shameless that the journal is hiding this information and one of them actually said that it's getting to the point where the wall street journal needs to put a disclosure note on the top of its editorial page saying that the mitt romney campaign approves of these pages and i mean but it is the opinion page we do know where to go where not to go just like with c.n.n. and fox news and m.s.n.

you see and all those other channels you know what you're going to get when you see that is that something i mean considering the fact that the wall street journal is leaning to the. is it something that's really that surprising at all that this is happening well i think the growing context is important because if you take take for example karl rove is a well known political figure from the conservative movement chief advisor to the bush administration and he's written written countless columns for the wall street journal during this election cycle but up until very recently he was always cited only as a former bush adviser but he also is playing a key role as a major fundraiser for the romney campaign running a major super pac to try and help defeat barack obama and so the question becomes is the context here that karl rove is a conservative that he's a former bush adviser now the context here is that as he's opining on the election he has a stake in the election i think the same is true of these ten romney advisers and their twenty three columns they're trying to manipulate views of the election it's

important not what they used to do it's important what they are doing right now. and i mean this certainly isn't the only case of this happening right. how do you i mean it's far as editorial writers go i'm sure that mitt romney's advisers are not the only ones that are out there writing pieces that are a problem at romney and obama well of we think disclosure is an important point of the media landscape and that you know it's ok to be a conservative and to write your opinions and your opinion the wall street journal it's important that those opinions be honest but it's also important that the reader knows what your perspective is beyond just i'm a conservative it's important to say i also am advising this campaign that's not a partisan issue this this extends to everybody and to all media outlets it's important to disclose to your readers to your viewers the point of view of the person who's giving them a now analysis i mean i guess what i'm asking is is there more cases of this or is this an isolated incident or is this a wider problem that we're facing with the media today. well we certainly have seen

that it's a major problem with the wall street journal it's an interesting question to look beyond that i think the pressure to disclose is only going to get greater we've seen the wall street journal just this week finally disclose roads connection to the super pac but this is not the end of that conversation and it's not limited to just one article or one writer or ten writers disclosure is important across the media landscape well let's take a look at i mean it's no secret that people are losing faith in american media these days i do want to bring up a graphic to kind of show this loss of faith so this poll shows that over half of americans don't trust the media sixty percent said they have not very much trust and none at all i mean based on this in other cases of subjective journalism are people losing confidence and rightly so. i don't think there's any question that people are losing confidence in the media the numbers that you cite kind of bear that out i think going back to this issue of transparency and disclosure i think this is a way that media can help get the public trust back by saying this is the perspective

that this particular writer is coming from it's important to note that this note this issue of disclosure is not just on the editorial pages of the wall street. all right we were talking about karl rove they've called karl rove they've called it his super pac in the past without making that connection that this person is on the payroll here he's also has a vested financial stake in this election so this does extend beyond the kind of subjective editorial pages and i think it is important if the media wants to gain back the public trust that they treat the public they treat their readers and their viewers on with honesty and i do want to take we just have about a minute left i do want to take a closer look at. fox news m s n b c and c.n.n. really quickly so fox news is doing phenomenally and there are a very they're blowing it out of water on the other hand you have c.n.n. they're flopping i mean they're kind of trying to switch things around so that they can try to keep the water but we know the fox news wave right we know that m.s.m.

you see sways left some critics have said that c.n.n. simply transcribes what is going on in the world and that that's not journalism anymore i mean do you have to have commentary in order to be successful it stays i think c.n.n. has had commentary in the past they've certainly appear to be in a transition phase right now i'm not sure that going after the fox news sean hannity model is the way to go let's keep in mind that c.n.n. are the people that brought us lou dobbs and glenn beck and so there has to be a way to present information to the public in a way that grabs you right jeremy thank you so much for joining us that was jeremy holden director of research at media matters thank you. and speaking of subjective journalism we have a prime time case of cable t.v. news trying to get first trying to get it first with the story just about thirty minutes ago fox news covered a police chase that started phoenix the chase had lasted over an hour but the suspect jumped from the car and ran into a field with

a live news chopper overhead the suspect pulled out a gun and shot himself dead live on television fox news quickly went to break and then came back with this apology really messed up. and we're all very sorry. that didn't belong on t.v. we took every precaution to have it take to keep it moving on t.v. and i personally apologize to you that that happened. so is this a case of a mainstream media being eager to break the news first rather than get it right. time will only tell will have to wait to find that one out. all right well so far in the show we have talked about two stories that may or may not affect you personally but here's one that does affect you and more importantly your health so pay attention because this is important it's no secret that the leading cause of death in the u.s. is heart disease followed by cancer respiratory disease and strokes but did you

know that patient harm is the fifth leading cause of deaths in the u.s. that's right the people you trust with your life and your health have a hand and many of the deaths from negligence some argue it's actually closer to number one so the question is do you trust your doctor laurie harshness of the resident dot net went out onto the streets of new york to check the pulse of the nation. when it comes to the health care debate in the united states people tend to focus on insurance companies and government spending but they don't focus on is the sixth largest killer preventable medical errors this week let's talk about those how many people do you think die every year in the united states from medical errors. thousand. almost one hundred times that are you surprised to know that the

president served i'm in a guess twenty five thousand. one hundred thousand closer to one hundred thousand or two hundred well does that surprise you yeah kill people they kill people like that when they're supposed to be caring for them everybody makes mistakes. that are going to get the picture the wrong place yeah but that doesn't kill you doctor takes out the wrong organ i know i know i get a room and everybody's human but there's forty wrong side or wrong procedure errors made every week in this country don't doesn't seem high i mean how hard is it to operate on the right side you need to. computerize is that the answer just maybe it's just people there neglect and you know they really don't care about their work anymore maybe they're just you know they're in it for the money and insurance claims and they're not just really it's about passion people don't have passion anymore and that's something that that america is suffering right now you can see it in the economy and you know everywhere you look it's

a passion i never oprah. anything in my body before i see five doctors at least three from three to five doctors. to see if it's really necessary to the operation first of all and secondly. if you comfortable with the doctor that's important for us to take responsibility to really think nurses and they were states there's pharmacists that make mistakes people are human they make mistakes people die it's unfortunate i mean i don't mean to be callous but it's true it happens so if you know this and it seems obvious why isn't that part of the health care discussion because that costs a lot of money to you know we focus on insurance companies and we focus on government policy. i think it should be part of health care discussion clearly medical errors in the united states are problem thankfully new legislation has been put into effect that prevents insurance companies from paying hospitals for these

errors and obvious step in the right direction. all right will capital account is up next on our team let's check in with host lauren let's start to see what's on today's agenda hi lauren i see you're in new york what do you got for us today hi megan we are in new york and it's good to be here because it's a great reminder to be where the financial system calls in the center of it really to know how the financial crisis legacy is still being felt it's been for years but the legacy is still with us amounting to litigation layoffs and not to mention the loss of taxpayers an enemy. that are still feeling that now today we have news from bank of america this is the evidence exhibit a if you will of this legacy bank of america has announced a settlement with shareholders that allege that when bank of america acquired merrill they kept shareholders in the dark about the losses they knew they were

taking on and it mounted to a huge plunge in bank of america's stock price bank of america did not admit wrongdoing with this settlement but we will talk to heidi moore she is the new york bureau chief for marketplace and their wall street correspondent she's been covering this beat for a long time going back a couple of years she was reporting on the bank of america merrill deal calling it the deal from hell so we are going to look back in order to understand where we are now and assessed the ways in which the financial crisis is still with us plus we're in new york dimitri and i had to central park to cover some central park related stories from a horse drawn carriage so you won't want to miss that sounds good lauren looking forward to it that's going to that's all coming up next in just a couple minutes but for now a quick we're going to go we've got a quick note for you before we leave though the international emmys are coming up on monday and r.t.d. has been nominated under the current of very fairs and news categories for our continuous coverage of the occupy wall street movement several members of our crew

are headed to new york this weekend for the ceremony so what shows luck and if you want to really watch that occupy coverage or for more on any of the stories we've covered today go to youtube dot com slash r t america check out our website r t dot com slash usa and don't forget to follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez. emission and free cretaceous and free transport charges free. range month free risk free stooge type free. download free broadcast plug in video for your media projects and free media and on to our teeth dot com. wealthy british style.

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